


12:00

by HerbertBest



Series: Two Lonely People [4]
Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Bittersweet, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, Drama, Epiphanies, F/M, Failed Hook-Ups, Humor, Internal Conflict, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 18:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7475724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve AM to Three AM.</p><p>It's amazing how much can change when you're left alone to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	12:00

**12 AM**

This is the third time he’s re-watched this play, but it’s not sinking in or making sense. His nerves thrum anxiously. His body’s craving some kind of close contact, and the woman he actually (might) love is on a date with her husband to an Overwatch party.

He tries hard not to think of Holly as he picks up the phone.

**12:15**

He does this every once in awhile. There are a small circle of women he trusts, that he’s fairly close with, that are free and happy to hook up with him. In the two weeks that’ve passed by since he and Holly made love he’s been trying to figure out where they stand, tries to stay single and lets her be married and figure out how deep the roots of their relationship go.

He picks up his phone and started texting numbers.

_I would adore your company tonight._

_If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?_

_Would you care to dance the dance horizontal tango tonight, milady?_

Stock lines, but these girls liked him, knew he was kidding. The responses came back in more slowly.

_Not tonight, Dan.  
Can’t, wrong time of the month_

And, humiliatingly, 

_I take it you didn’t get the invitation to the wedding._

Shit. Dan spends twenty minutes promising to show up to said wedding and bring the “coolest fucking gift I can find”. He almost flings the phone across the room once the conversation peters to an awkward end.

**12:35**

Arin is wrong. Jury Duty has not aged well.

**12:40**

He hears a faint laugh first as the door to Barry’s room shuts tight. The first moan is Ross’. 

Then there’s a regular, rhythmic thudding, right up against his bedroom wall.

Dan grabs his jacket and his keys and almost dives for his door.

No way in hell was he going to stick around and listen to this.

**12:50**

_Holly? Are you still awake?_

_Yeah. It’s just me and the birds. Would you like to come over?_

_I’m already out the door._

He just manages to avoid backing into Ross’ car as he does so.

**1:20**

Halfway to Holly’s house, the skies open up. Rain sheets down over Dan’s truck, making the already alien and deserted streets seem post-apocalyptic. The gutters wash out. It seems to clean up everything but this mess.

**1:32**

He stands outside her house in the middle of the night, rain soaking his hair, bouncing off of his leather jacket, sliding into his sneakers. In spite of his doubts he knows this is exactly where he belongs.

**1:33**

Holly stands on the doorstep with Orph in her arms, wearing pale blue owl-decorate pajamas.

Dan’s heart leaps into his mouth. He pushes his hands through his hair and tries to pretend he’s Danny Sexbang, standing in front of a crowd of a thousand. He can James Dean his way through his. He can do anything, right?

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he echoes back.

She smiles and he loses his breath. 

_Oh no,_ he thinks.

Orph hops up on her shoulder and down to the floor behind her when she takes a step forward. She reaches for Dan’s wet hand and pulls him into the warmth and solace of her house.

**3 AM**

He doesn’t have sex that night.

The thought doesn’t even cross his mind for hours.

Sitting on Holly’s couch, letting her sleep against his too-tight borrowed teeshirt while his own clothing dries in another part of the house, with one cat on his shoulder and the other curled on Holly’s hip, his fingers play softly with her hair.

On the TV, Spider-Man’s swinging through Manhattan and he’s doing nothing as electric, yet he feels fulfilled, satisfied, just feeling her other hand curl up in his, tiny and vulnerable. The thought crashes in on him, hard and quick. 

_Oh God._ This could be enough.

And in an instant he is, in his own special way, just as thoroughly fucked as Ross and Barry.


End file.
